Hi, this my be a weird request but I'm wondering if it's possible to instill a vintage unix (like early 1980's) onto a laptop or desktop. If so how I would I go about downloading and installing?
I'm mainly wanting to do this as an little porject and some funsies for me.
Thanks.
Sure, if you are talking about something like ISC 386/ix or Microport Unix.
You don't by any chance know how I would go about installing it?
Here are some issues:
Finding a distribution on media that you have a reader for, early 80's means 5-1/4" diskettes?
Finding drivers for a network card, assuming you can even get tcp software
Being able to work with a large hard drive. Early versions of Xenix would only read the hard drive parameters from the CMOS, and you had a choice of maybe 17 drive types, all less than 100mb.
Yeah, I thought that would hinder me. I was just wondering. I'm thinking about changing tactics and buying a ye olde' computer for laughs, I've been wanting to for a while anyway. Green text would be amazing. I'm rather into old tech.
I tried to install Linux onto an old 486sx box. Needed as much memory as possible, so I upgraded it to 20M (the max) and had to purchase EXPENSIVE cache chips as well.
$800 later (yes.... $800!!!!).... I had a machine that was slow and practically worthless.
Remember that the REASON why Linux (and even Unix) became doable was when Windows 95 came on the scene and we started seeing machines with 8M of memory. So... not saying you can't use an old machine... just don't go REALLY old.
Also, as others pointed out you pretty much have to match the machine/architecture for the "vintage" Unix. Sometimes it has to be a VERY precise match. Old version of SCO Unixware for example only worked on VERY specific pieces of hardware.
In general... IMHO... it's not worth the effort. Now... if you want to take an old machine and experiment with writing your own OS from scratch... knock yourself out... it can be great fun.
Oh... and lastly... people are THROWING away good old equipment that is actually useful... so I wouldn't pay anything for old hardware. For example, you should be able to snag a Pentium III host for nothing. And some of the servers there had at 2G or more of memory even. I wouldn't pay more than $50 USD for a Pentium IV based system (and those are also getting thrown out for free everywhere).
If you're in the Dallas area... I'll give you a 2cpu Opteron 246 workstation with 4G. That's a VERY powerful host. I'll even throw in 2 10K rpm SCSI drives. You can pick up the same for $100-200 easily on ebay.
Also.. (back on topic)... remember that 80's Unix (real Unix, be it BSD or SysV) was tty focused and NOT network focused. So ethernet controllers, esp, before 1985, if present, were often times AUI or 10Base2 (token ring at 4mbit was probably more popular). A lot of the parts on equipment that old, e.g. the disks, are likely to be in very bad shape.
"Old computer" should mean Pentium 3 and older. The P4 requires the operating system to regulate the cpu temperature, and that wasn't added until about 1999-2000.
The oldest release of SCO Unix that I still have media for is version 3.2.2, published June 1989. At the time we ran it on a Compaq Systempro with two 386 processors, two 387 co-processors, and four 100mb IDE disks (RAID 1). We also had a 24 port Consensys multiport serial card with its own processor.
Thanks for the info cjcox, I'm currently in Scotland though. My house is littered with old computer parts people were throwing away. Like a old Commodore 64 (not working unfortunatly) that I salvaged from the rubbish tip from my old high school.
I doubt a laptop or modern desktop would be accepted by any early 80's UNIX. PCI wasn't invented at that time so an ISA or EISA bus would probably be a requirement for the OS. Perhaps booting some kind of 5"1/4 diskette miniroot ...
One way around the old hardware issue, is to use an emulator like Bochs. It can be build to emulate an IBM AT and more. I have used it successfully for this purpose on a number of occasions.
Just recently scrapped my last 386 laptop, a dual boot DOS/Xenix 2.3.4 running on a 10/10 HD split IIRC. In its place is a dual boot 486 with DOS and SCO 4.2 unix.
Although SCO wanted specific hardware I was able to put their stuff on a bunch of hardware they probably never heard of and probably wouldn't have supported, if they supported anything. ( ongoing snipe)
Whatever you choose, it probably will need ISA bus and a MFM set, or possibly a SCSI set, although SCSI controllers for that vintage are going scarce.
